in sickness, in fire, in health
on disability and disaster and community care
hi friends,
as someone who lived in southern california for over 15 years, and lived through nearly yearly fires in my area, i have never seen this level of destruction there. i am watching these fires displace my dear friends, burn their houses to the ground, cause new health issues with this smoke and ash and who knows what, and worsen their existing chronic conditions. i worry down the line, the exposure to the ‘who knows what’ (asbestos, lead, and more!) may cause further, unknown, unseeable harms. they may only become known some 20 years down the line.
i see so many parallels between my worries that are here and those that are for our friends in palestine. that is, the us empire prioritizing capital and imperialism over the health and safety of people everywhere is nothing new, that even in relative safety at the imperial core we — particularly those of us who are multiply marginalized— face danger and threat of death and disability at the hands of greed and resource hoarding and feel the indirect effects of some far away unnecessary “war.” it perhaps only affirms our interconnectedness with the rest of the world, to identify the source of our collective grief and anger at being sacrificed for capital.
in times of mass despair like these, i hear people say things like “we are not meant to hold this much grief.” but also with the quick mobilization from mutual aid orgs, i also see how capable we are of holding each other in a time of great need. a friend and i have been talking about how the level of care we see, the capacity for care people have, how we want only to see this reflected in every day— and not just in crisis. because the capacity for our collective care is so big and tangible and plausible in moments like this, we can see the possibility that it might fit into every day.
disabled people have been at the forefront of many of these mutual aid efforts and organizations. while disabled wisdom is being called upon to educate on air quality and distribute tens of thousands of supplies (see: MaskBlocLA and corsi rosenthal box diy filter build events), i am also reminded that disabled people have been psychologized, harassed, ostracized (by health care providers and society alike) for their lifesaving use of respirators and portable air purifiers and their level of preparation in their every day. disabled people have been prepared for this because no one is coming for us in these events, no one is coming on a regular day. moreover, disabled people are most likely to be left behind in disaster planning because they are not thought of in evacuation planning, information isn’t available accessibly, and are 2-4 times more likely than non-disabled people to die or be injured in natural disasters and conflicts - as of today, january 16th, we know that at least 25 people have perished in the la fires, many of whom were disabled and had limited mobility, and/or were elderly. anthony mitchell, a wheelchair user, and his son, justin, who had cerebral palsy, were unable to evacuate and left waiting for an ambulance that never came.
there is a reason that disabled people make efforts to be prepared for and write often of wildfires. no one is coming for us. evacuating is harder and sometimes impossible to do alone when you are disabled. i know that if i were in the very real scenario where we were evacuating by car and the fire burned too close too fast that we would have to leave the car behind, i simply would not make it. i cannot run anymore. my partner and i talked about the scenario in which we might have 10 minutes to pack our things to evacuate — first on our list is my medication, without which i would not be even able to be upright without losing consciousness. and if i were to not have had the time to even grab my medications? imagining having to call insurance for an emergency supply in the middle of a disaster makes me want to pull my hair out.
“Everyone loves disability justice, no one wants to do it.”
— Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work
we know that people die from not only fire, but from smoke and air quality as well. david lynch, who died shortly after evacuating, surely would have been affected by the horrible air quality, as he had emphysema. he was disabled and also homebound because covid and other infections meant death or further disability for him. do you contribute to disabled people’s—including david lynch’s— inability to leave our houses by making public spaces inaccessible? are you mindful of our shared air? how does your (lack of) action contribute to this? do you believe disabled people should be sequestered for your ‘right to comfort?’
we also know that in 9/11 more people died from exposure to toxins that were released in the air from building destruction, than from the actual event itself. wildfire, disaster, has the potential to be deadly, yes, but also is mass-disabling from airborne toxins. being disabled makes you more vulnerable to the toxins and smoke particles (and disease). according to the growing body of research, having had covid even once can leave your— yes, yours, your ‘healthy,’ ‘young,’ ‘fit,’— immune system and body more vulnerable, whether you feel it or not. this is your reminder that masks are tools that are part of our future with climate crisis and surveillance (cop cities) and increasing infectious disease.
in 2018, leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha wrote into ‘care work’ about their experience with the 2017 wildfires in the pacific northwest, where sick and disabled folks were equipped with and quickly shared/crowdfunded for respirators and HEPA air filter access points and filter builds and post-smoke-exposure treatments. in 2022, leah wrote in ‘the future is disabled’ about the 2020 wildfires on the west coast and of mask blocs and filter builds again — but also of knowing that these fires, “worse than we’d ever seen them,” are only going to get worse.
who has been prepared for these events other than disabled people who have needed these supplies on the daily? i am reminded of the HEPA filter placed in my elementary school classroom by my parents, the one i bought for myself in the beginning of grad school that i was then equipped with when the pandemic began in 2020, the kf94 masks i had in my coat pocket from when i visited korea that winter before the pandemic was recognized in the US (east asia has culturally integrated regular mask wearing in winter and in air pollution) that i got to utilize early on when sourcing masks was hard, that disabled wisdom and preparedness has only ever saved me.
as much mutual aid and resource distribution is happening, what infrastructure and effort is there to prevent fires from happening in the first place or how do governments respond to these enormous amounts of need in the face of destruction? we cannot only gofundme our way out of this.
the la government asked mutual aid groups—made up of disabled people who have limited energy and resources— for their supplies and their assistance, while months before having begun talks of a mask ban in the middle of a covid surge. the irony of it all. disabled people were readily abandoned and going to be subjected to increased policing and surveillance, and consent was already being manufactured for mass disablement and ostracizing us from public spaces (y’all, no matter what you think, the pandemic is not ‘endemic,’ nor did it end when biden — you trust that man now?— said so to arbitrarily go ‘back to normal’ while the rates of illness are yet high and the rates of disability due to post-viral illness are increasing as a direct result? i see the people in my life with multiple infections becoming sicker and sicker with new health issues).
according to mutual aid group members, the red cross came in to co-opt and shut down efforts being made by mutual aid organizations. they were turning down volunteers and donations, declining air purifiers which would assist with air quality indoors, and declining to distribute (or wear) respirators to the displaced populations, all while having the fraught history of mismanaging millions in disaster relief funds. the orange county fire authority in irvine auctioned off huge amounts of respirators and supplies instead of handing them out for free in this time of great need. multiple days into these fires, the la public library would finally announce that they would start distributing free n95s.
in california we have built into the system that incarcerated YOUTH firefighters and incarcerated firefighters (read: modern day slavery) can fight these fires with pay of <$10/day and no showers, no regular meals, no labor rights, and little to no PPE provided, causing who knows how many health problems in the future. and many of them still cannot become firefighters after their time is done, because they have felony convictions. that was legalized and affirmed this past year on the ballot - a direct consequence of that.
we often reach for each other in mass crises where so many of us as individuals are affected, but so many people are and will continue to be in crisis on the regular when your attention isn’t called to it. i hope that you will continue to donate to these funds sustainably — not just now in their high time of need, but also a month from now, 3 months from now, a year from now, when no one might be looking and it may no longer be in the news.
ways you can support:
@maskblocla and @cleanairlosangeles could use your support to continue providing respirators and air purifiers
contribute to the gofundmes of disabled folks displaced by la fires
pay into jpays accounts (can be used for commissary) of incarcerated firefighters or anti-recidivism coaltion's fundraiser for incarcerated firefighters
contribute to gofundmes of black families displaced by the altadena fires
support immigrant workers impacted by the fires with the national day laborer organizing network
wear a high-quality respirator (kn95, n95, p100 for toxic particles etc.) and/or goggles so you keep yourself safe from long-term health effects from the smoke, asbestos, lead, infectious agents, etc.—despite blue skies and ‘safe’ aqi readings which do NOT read for toxins in the air.
so a lot of these are gofundme’s again, and while these are meaningful, material, contributions for people’s lives these are also thousands of bandaids to systemic failures. joe’s $770 is not solving anyone’s burnt down house in altadena that was the first source of their family’s generational wealth that a real estate developer wants to snatch up tomorrow. i don’t know what the answer is to all of this is. what i do know is that we fare better when everyone cares more, when we expand our capacity for care, when we are able to respond effectively in times of need (always), and when we imagine things can be different than they are now. your local community fridge, stop cop city, community garden, free store, tenant organization, ice watch, street vendors, mask bloc, community space, repair cafe, street medics, community clinic, community bookstore all need you. and not just this week, but two years from now too (i’m also going to leave this here as a starting point for folks in la to come back to). we cannot leave people behind, no matter what. and to paraphrase leah again, we must match the pace of the slowest and sickest of us.
ok love you.
stay safe,
christina